<Begin Segment 17>

MA: So let's go back and talk about leaving camp. So you left June 4, 1945.

BU: Somewhere, somewhere in June.

MA: Somewhere around, so June of '45. So where did you end up going?

BU: Okay, what had happened there was we were notified, the camp was gonna close in October. My folks had not decided where or what they were gonna do. I had been communicating with one of my aunt and uncles who were childless, one of my mother's sisters and her husband. And I, even before the war, I used to go to their place, their farm in Warm Springs, California, and spend time with them. And I had talked with them about going to school in San Jose State and living with them. And they invited me to do that, and so couple days after graduating from high school, I got my train ticket and twenty-five dollars, and they sent me to, took me by bus to Delta, got on a train by myself, one small suitcase, went to Ogden, changed trains. And on the way to Ogden it was fine, got a seat, and then got on the train in Ogden, and it was loaded with GIs with soldiers and sailors that were headed to the West Coast because the victory in Europe was over, and everybody, they were headed to the Pacific, and all these people, and there were no seats. So I sat on my suitcase and entered one of the cars, and tried to stay as invisible as I could. Didn't want any of them to ask me if I was a "Jap," you know, like I had, incident in Oakland. And rode on that suitcase, and I guess, I don't know how long it was, sixteen hours, and got, Oakland, my aunt met me in Oakland and took me out to Warm Springs. And stayed there with them for, I don't know, I guess a little over a month, and my folks came back to Oakland, so then I rejoined the family at the OME, the Japanese Methodist Church in Oakland.

MA: That's where they were staying when they first came back?

BU: The church became a hostel, and they had laid out a bunch of bunks, cots, mattresses, one section women's, one section for men. They did have a shower back there, and a kitchen, pretty nice big kitchen. And eventually my mom became the cook for all the, you know, people that were using the hostel. And we stayed there, oh, for quite a while. I started school, went to San Francisco, at that time, junior college. And eventually, shortly after that, maybe a month or so, again, the elders of the church offered my mom the parsonage, our family, the parsonage, that normally the reverend would occupy. But they hadn't selected a reverend yet, so that was Oakland. So they offered that to our family if she would be the cook, and that's, so we lived there for a while. And then, I was commuting to San Francisco (Junior College), and then Lee Mullis and his dad were gonna move back east, and offered our house, his house to our family, my mom and dad, so we moved into his house. Eventually, they offered to sell it to us, but my mom and dad chose not to (buy it). (We) moved into Lee's house, and that's where I was when I went in the Air Force in '49.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.